More on IBM Deskstar/Travelstar failure; Fujitsu drives also affected

UPDATE: Repair report John Bussjaeger reports that he received a detailed analysis regarding the physical flaws that caused failure of his Deskstar drive from a repair shop:

"Some sort of power problem occurred which cause the drive to suddenly stop--possibly due to heat; they did not know but called it a 'power anomaly' of the drive itself. The sudden stop of the drive caused the drive's heads to crash. The surface is so smooth that if the heads touch they stick. I assume they meant that the drive spun down for no reason without parking the heads in a 'safe zone.' The motor still worked later; however, it was either me turning it back on or during the first head crash that the heads stuck and were actually ripped off their arms.

"The surface was too damaged to recover any data. I was unlucky because all the heads ripped off, so there was no way I could get anything from it---and they said it must have scratched up the surface worse when I tried repeatedly to access drive."

Cooling an issue? MacFixIt reader Stefan writes that cooling may be an issue with the widely reported failures involving IBM's Deskstar and Travelstar hard drives, for which we noted a class action lawsuit yesterday:

"I've come to the conclusion that a great factor is the drives' cooling (or lack of cooling). They also have a large marking "do not cover this hole" on their top. I guess that if you pack the drives too densely or air circulation is insufficient, they heat up and die."

"To prevent this from happening, I just separated the two deskstars (60 GB Apple original and new 80 GB) in my G4 quicksilver mac - the normal setup is 'new drive on top of old one' on the existing drive carrier, which is rather tight. I bought a longer ide cable and placed the 2nd drive on the carrier in front of the case, two positions from the original drive. Also, I mounted the original drive on top of the 'two in one' carrier assembly to get air circulation under it, too."

Fujitsu drives also failing Scott Park notes that Fujitsu hard drives are also at the center of class-action lawsuit.

"IBM Desk Star hard drives don't look like they are the only ones with high failure rates. Fujitsu drives, some which came in PowerBooks are also under litigation: http://www.sheller.com/fujitsuclassaction.htm. I've had two fail on me."

Resources

class action lawsuit

http://www.sheller.com/fuj...

More from Late-Breakers